When did we stop caring about the difference between "aggravate" and "irritate"? And more importantly—should we have?
I was half-grading, half-procrastinating on a Sunday afternoon when I put this on, figuring ninety minutes of Ambrose Bierce telling people they're wrong about English would pair nicely with a stack of sophomore essays about The Great Gatsby that all start with "In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald." (Lord, give me strength.) And honestly? Bierce's cranky little usage guide from 1909 turned out to be exactly the company I needed.
A Dead Man's Red Pen Still Stings
Here's what you need to know about Write it Right: it's basically Bierce standing at his editorial desk with a ruler, rapping the knuckles of every American English speaker who dares to say "donate" when they mean "give," or "transpire" when they mean "occur." The book is an alphabetical blacklist of what Bierce considered linguistic crimes. Some of his prescriptions still hold. Some are hilariously wrong by modern standards. And that tension—between what one brilliant, acid-tongued writer insisted was correct and what a living language actually did over the next century—is where the real entertainment lives.
This reminds me of what Hemingway said about prose being architecture. Bierce would've agreed, except he'd also insist your architecture was ugly and your contractor should be fired. The man who wrote "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and The Devil's Dictionary brings that same corrosive wit here, just aimed at grammar instead of human folly. (Though for Bierce, bad grammar probably was human folly.) He doesn't explain why certain usages are wrong so much as pronounce them guilty and move on. It's less Strunk and White's patient instruction and more a judge handing down sentences with visible contempt. That same tension between making art on your own terms and caring deeply about craft is something I kept circling back to in Art & Fear—a very different book, but one that understands the cost of having strong opinions about the right way to do something.
What makes it genuinely valuable in 2024 is watching which battles he lost. Bierce insists "loan" should never be used as a verb—only "lend." He'd be horrified to walk into any American bank today. He rails against "fix" meaning "to repair" rather than "to fasten." Language won. Bierce lost. And there's something weirdly comforting about that, especially for someone like me who spends his days circling comma splices while knowing, deep down, that the comma splice will outlive us all.
The LibriVox Chorus—Messy, Human, Kind of Perfect
Let's talk about the narration, because this is where things get interesting. LibriVox uses volunteer readers, which means you're getting a rotating cast of voices reading different sections of Bierce's alphabetical entries. The production quality is what you'd expect from a free, volunteer-driven project—uneven. But here's the thing: it actually works for this particular book.
Some of the readers lean into Bierce's curmudgeonly tone, adopting this exasperated, slightly disgusted delivery that sounds like a Victorian schoolmaster who's had it up to here. Others read with a kind of amused detachment, like they know Bierce is being ridiculous about half of these and they're in on the joke. The variety keeps ninety minutes of alphabetical grammar corrections from becoming monotonous. You lose the consistency of a single professional narrator, sure, but you gain this accidental effect where it feels like a whole room of people arguing about English—which, honestly, is what usage debates have always been.
I wouldn't call it polished. The transitions between readers can be jarring, and the recording quality shifts noticeably from section to section. But for a free audiobook of a public domain text? The prose deserves to be savored, and enough of these readers understand that.
Who Should Wrestle with Bierce's Ghost
If you're an English teacher, a writer, an editor, or just someone who gets unreasonably annoyed when people say "could care less"—you'll find a kindred spirit here, even when you disagree with him. If you loved The Elements of Style, this is its meaner, funnier, more opinionated ancestor. My students would hate this. I love it.
But if you want a systematic grammar guide or a useful modern reference, skip it. This isn't a textbook. It's a time capsule. It's one man's losing argument with the future of English, and it's both humbling and hilarious to listen to from a hundred and fifteen years down the road.
At under two hours, it's barely a commitment. I finished it before I finished grading, which tells you something about both the book's pace and my grading speed.
The Red Pen Retires (For Now)
Worth pausing the faculty meeting for? Maybe not. But worth a Sunday afternoon with a red pen in one hand and a cup of coffee going cold in the other? Absolutely. Bierce lost most of these fights, but he lost them with such style that you almost wish he'd won a few more.
